9/11: My Daughter's Story

You hold their hand when they're learning to walk, you teach them how to cross the street. You do everything you can to keep them safe. Finally your children grow up, and go off to seek their fortunes.

In 2001, my daughter Siobhan, who was 25, had found a job in Manhattan and an apartment in Queens. She had fallen in love with "the city," as we who live in the New York metropolitan area call it.

And then 9/11 happened.

Her experience was what a life-changing illness is like. For a time, the pain and the fear may be all there is. But eventually, with the healing, life on the other side begins.

Here is her story.

September 11th Now

By M. Siobhan O'Brien

I built my New York in much the same way the essayist Colson Whitehead built his: on the elevated train in Queens. Each morning my decision was whether to sit facing east, so I could look at the midtown skyline as we rumbled along above 31st Street; or to sit facing west, so I could see the Twin Towers when we turned the corner toward Manhattan at Queens Plaza.

The first choice gave me an unobstructed view of the classic New York skyline: The Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and the Citigroup Center -- a view that reminded me every morning that I lived in a place people dreamed about, a city that had the power to make dreams come true.

The latter, the view of the two World Trade Center towers, took my breath away every time I saw it. It was a part of the city so different from where I lived and worked. Downtown is where people do things every day that others around the world open their newspapers to read about -- a place rich in history; masculine and fast-paced; energy palpable on every narrow, shadowy, cool -- always cool, no matter what the temperature -- street.

I haven't been down there much since the towers got taken away from us. In 2005, I dated a guy who lived in Battery Park City. He had a window the size of a movie screen in his living room, and it overlooked Ground Zero. I remember standing there for nearly a half hour one morning, looking down and wondering how he could stand it.

What is it like for the people who live and work there? Do they, as I did that morning, see the ghosts of the towers and the people who lost their lives? Do they feel the sadness that hangs heavily over that part of the city? Or have they -- necessarily -- grown thick skins to survive: If you have to be there, you find a way to cope.

I don't know how most people feel; actually, I'm afraid to ask. I'm weirdly possessive of my own experience of that day. But I wonder whether, perhaps like survivors of Hurricane Katrina, they look back at that day and say that it -- more than any other day in their lives -- was the day that changed things forever.

That thought fills me with a strange mix of loneliness and kinship.

Because I still think about September 11th every day.

Everything reminds me of it: Beautifully bright and unusually clear days like that Tuesday morning and the days that immediately followed it. A weirdly windy and unexpectedly dark evening in early September, like the first anniversary of the attacks. Planes flying atypical patterns or irregularly low. Subways stopping strangely, suddenly. Police car sirens wailing as they move unusually quickly into the distance.

It makes me lonely because it's a horrible way to feel, and it's not something I can share with other people.

If they weren't here, they wouldn't understand. If they were here, and they have the same response, they wouldn't want to hear about it. If we mentioned it every time we thought about it, it would be all we talked about.

However, in the instances of sharing I've had with friends I trust, it's a relief to learn that I'm not the only one who can't do something as simple as cross 6th Avenue without thinking that the middle of that street used to offer one hell of a view of the Twin Towers.

And that's where the kinship comes in.

I feel a kinship so strong with everyone who was here that day, and it's a powerful thing, feeling kinship with eight million people.

I remember going back to work on September 13, and it was the day I realized how much I care about everybody. I knew all my family and friends and co-workers were okay, but I didn't know about the guy who gets me my coffee each morning at Dunkin' Donuts, for example, and I was a little caught off guard by how happy I was to see him.

And I guess that's what speaks to what I've always believed about this city. The best things in the world are here, but so are the worst, and it takes a lot of strength to survive it all. Living is not a passive activity in New York City.

September 11 was the worst day of my life. It opened my eyes to realities I hadn't yet understood about the world, and it brought tremendous sadness to my city. But it's when it's darkest that you see the most stars.

The New York City Marathon in November 2001 was one of my favorite days in my entire life. It was the first big party the city threw after September 11, and for me, at least, it was the day that I started feeling like we were going to be okay.

And the New Year's Eve leading into 2002 was the greatest New Year's Eve I'll ever have, running through Times Square in the bitter cold at 1 a.m., throwing piles of confetti at each other and laughing until it hurt.

I've never been one to take things for granted, but I can only think of one day in my entire life leading up to September 11 when I stepped back from what I was doing and thought to myself that I was happy to be alive.

But I've had lots of days like that since September 11, and I'm a better person for it.

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